Featured Writer: Joseph S. Pete

By Raja's Insight on July 28, 2018 • ( 0 )

The Eternal Delusion

Rows upon overstuffed rows

of handsome leather-bound books

lined those stately hardwood shelves.

All the classics are crammed in:

Cervantes, Austen, Dumas, Bronte,

the whole damn Western canon.

After flipping through so many gilded pages,

I tried my hand at writing literature of my own,

striving in vain for that leathery facade of immortality.

About the Author

Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, a photographer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. He is a 2017 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee who has read his work for the Fictitious series on the iO Theater stage and who was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His literary or photographic work has appeared in more than 100 journals, including Creative Talents Unlimited, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Chicago Literati, Dogzplot, Proximity Magazine, Stoneboat, The High Window, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Steep Street Journal, Beautiful Losers, New Pop Lit, The Grief Diaries, Gravel, The Offbeat, Oddball Magazine, The Perch Magazine, Bull Men’s Fiction, Rising Phoenix Review, Thoughtful Dog, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Prairie Winds, Blue Collar Review, The Rat’s Ass Review, Euphemism, Jenny Magazine, Vending Machine Press and elsewhere. He once Googled the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, true story.

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